How Well Do You Know Rover?

They never did fully explain the nature of The Prisoner's mysterious balloon sentry, but it was certainly feared, respected, effective and quite capable of serving some serious pain.

Do you think you know Rover? Or would you like to know more? Then go take the quiz over at AMC's The Prisoner Blog. (I scored 3 out of 5, but I was just guessing.)

The Prisoner Production Design Sketches

Episode 4, "Free for All." Production sketch by art director Jack Shampan.

The Prisoner 1960s Production Design Sketches

Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009)

Be seeing you...













Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of the cult classic The Prisoner, has died aged 80













R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner's TV Visionary













Remembering 'The Prisoner' creator/star Patrick McGoohan













Patrick McGoohan, RIP













images via AMC

Watch all 17 episodes of The Prisoner, free and legal

The Monocle (1964) - Dance Fight Sequence

OurManInHavana:

...from the French Eurospy thriller The Monocle (Le Monocle rit jaune). Directed by Georges Lautner and starring Paul Meurisse. Set in Hong Kong our heroes have just been drugged while they eat and now face a ruthless bunch of gangsters...

via Funky Junk Trunk

Be seeing you...

No. 6 meets No. 2

The Prisoner

The Prisoner - Episode 1 - Arrival

(watch all 17 episodes, free and legal)

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Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008 Don't miss them this time.

Briton saved dozens in hotel A millionaire private equity broker from London has emerged as a hero who stopped Islamic terrorists from massacring Britons and Americans in their attack on Mumbai.

LAX Tops Nation In Stolen, Missing Luggage Items "Easy pickings?" "Easy pickings." "I wouldn't put anything valuable in LAX" These two LAX employees would only talk if we concealed their identities. "I saw thefts within the first few weeks of working there." They both say there are organized rings of thieves, who identify valuables in your checked luggage by looking at the TSA x-ray screens, then communicate with baggage handlers by text or cell phone, telling them exactly what to look for. (via)

What is truth serum? Indian officials plan to inject captured Mumbai terrorist with the "truth serum," sodium pentothal, but history tells us that the technique isn't up to the task

Particulate Emissions From Laser Printers Do laser printers emit pathogenic toner particles into the air? Some people are convinced that they do. As a result, this topic is the subject of public controversy. Researchers have now investigated what particles the printers really do release into the air.

Black Garlic Introducing a simple food with a wonderfully complex flavor. Black garlic is sweet meets savory, a perfect mix of molasses-like richness and tangy garlic undertones. It has a tender, almost jelly-like texture with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency similar to a soft dried fruit. Hard to believe, but true. It’s as delicious as it is unique. (via)

also:
Two cases of compulsive swearing - in sign language
A Fragment Theory Of Deja Vu
Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate (when they were supposed to be writing papers)
Ancient city discovered deep in Amazonian rainforest linked to the legendary white-skinned Cloud People of Peru
Prized sculpture destroyed on trip to Art Basel Miami
How to Stretch a Canvas

don't miss:
The ultimate fate of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs (via)

viddy:
William Eggleston: I am at war with the obvious

stray bullets (Mumbai edition)

some notes on Mumbai:

Mumbai attacks - city fears five terrorists are 'missing' At least five terrorist gunmen have evaded capture in Mumbai and could make a secondary strike on India's financial capital, it was feared this morning.

Mumbai terrorist: I was ordered to kill 'until the last breath' The sole Mumbai gunman captured alive has told police he was trained in Pakistan and ordered to “kill until the last breath”, according to a leaked account of his interrogation.

Google Earth used by terrorists in India attacks Investigations by the Mumbai police, including the interrogation of one nabbed terrorist, suggest that the terrorists were highly trained and used technologies such as satellite phones, and global positioning systems (GPS), according to police. (Blackberries, too)

Zenpundit: Recommended Reading (for all the "in-depth" you could want)

Global Guerrillas: URBAN TAKEDOWN: MUMBAI (via)
JOURNAL: More on Tactical Innovation

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Getting A Story Made at National Geographic After talking with several National Geographic photographers about shooting for the magazine I became intrigued with the process of getting a story made. The collaboration between the photo editors and photographers and then the photographers involvement in all the steps along the way is unique and important to how they make stories. More magazines should spend this kind of time with their contributors. The few times I’ve had photographer come into the office and present their images to us have been incredibly rewarding and certainly I think made the story that much better. I asked David Griffin, National Geographic’s Director of Photography about the process of getting stories made and the rumored years it takes for a story to go from idea to printed page... (via)

Jacking into the Brain--Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface? How far can science advance brain-machine interface technology? Will we one day pipe the latest blog entry or NASCAR highlights directly into the human brain as if the organ were an outsize flash drive?

From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre A cache of letters hidden in the basement brings to life a house, a family and the tragedy that would change everything (via)

Love story: The librarian, the postal worker and their art Art takes up all the air in Herb and Dorothy Vogel's cramped one-bedroom on the Upper East Side. Minimalist and conceptual works cover every inch of wall and dangle from the ceiling. Because there is no other place for it, a Richard Tuttle painting clings to the inside of a louvered door that leads to the tiny kitchen. Other pieces crowd shelves and table tops. And the Vogels, who are giving the Miami Art Museum and 49 other institutions around the country gifts of 50 artworks each and are subjects of a documentary that will screen in December during Art Basel Miami Beach, say there is plenty more under the bed and jammed into the closets of this modest, rent-stabilized space they have called home since 1963.

Library Ghosts: Northeastern U.S. Last year about this time (just in time for Halloween), I posted on this blog a list of libraries that are said to be haunted. Now the library ghosts are back, by popular demand...

also:
Stanislav Petrov, the man who could have started a nuclear war, but didn’t (via)
Know Your Intelligence Agencies: National Reconnaissance Office
Biology in Science Fiction: Erasing Memory
The History of Some of Today's Most Common Phrases (via)
Recent additions to the Chambers Slang Dictionary
Punctuation Game
1000 artworks to see before you die (via)
Podcasts from the University of Oxford (via)
Haruki Murakami interview (via)
Wayne Coyne interview
Aerial Phenomena Research: Selected Papers - Jacques F. Vallee (via)
Casting the Runes by M.R. James
Oboe Bong

Futility Closet: Over the Moon Jules Verne earned his title as the father of science fiction. His 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon contains eerie similarities to the Apollo program that unfolded a century later. (read more)

viddy:
The Anti-Fascist trailer
Parallel Universes, Parallel Lives 1/6 (Eels frontman Mark Everett in search of his father's brain. Dr Hugh Everett III proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.) (via)
Hog Hunting (A plague of feral hogs has descended on the American South. They've been spotted here in Savannah.) (via)
The Real Secret Of The Matrix: The Haunting Sound Of The Waterphone (You'll know it as soon as you hear it.)
Daily (kinda sorta) Weather with David Lynch (via)
Angkor Wat, Cambodia (1930s newsreel)

Spy Pigeons

National Air and Space Museum:

In 1903, Dr. Julius Neubronner patented a miniature pigeon camera activated by a timing mechanism. Equipped with the cameras, the pigeons photographed a castle in Kronberg, Germany, around 1908. Pigeon Photographs © Deutsches Museum, Munich.

Spy Pigeons Circle the World

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HIV/AIDS Emerged as Early as 1880s Until now it was thought that HIV-1 Group M, the strain of HIV that causes the most infections worldwide, originated in 1930 in Cameroon. Epidemic levels of AIDS and HIV-1 infections started appearing in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo), around 1960. Findings from the new study, however, suggest that the virus most likely started circulating among humans in sub-Saharan Africa sometime between 1884 and 1924.

John Le Carré: The Madness of Spies The gun was indeed part of me: so much so that I had ceased to notice its presence on my hip. Stooping to address the ball, I was startled by the clang of a heavy metal object striking the tiled floor, and looked around to identify the source. Finally, I saw the Browning lying at my feet, but by then the inn had emptied itself of customers and landlord. I retrieved it, returned it to my waistband, and picked up the briefcase. “Abort,” the A.I.O. ordered, pausing only to finish his beer. Le Carré shares some personal history.

The Secret of How the Titanic Sank New evidence has experts rethinking how the luxury passenger liner sank (via)

A mannequin on a toilet and dry porridge – it's the Turner Prize The Turner Prize, the annual award for artists that never ceases to raise furious debate on what constitutes art and what should be dismissed as nonsense, yesterday proved it was not about to change the habit of a lifetime.

also:
Russian rap video soldier sent to Siberia
The Essays of Francis Bacon
The Speech Accent Archive (audio - very useful for actors) (via)

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Lift could take passengers straight into space Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift (elevator for us Americans) that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

MI6 agent's cover slips during BBC interview In his dangerous job the MI6 spy's identity needs to remain a closely guarded secret. So you can imagine his surprise when, during an interview with the national broadcaster, his carefully chosen disguise of a fake moustache failed him spectacularly.

Blogging about blogging What do young people think about blogging? Let’s have a look; here’s what one 18 year old has to say. This one happens to be my son, but I don’t think that prevents him from representing his generation: ‘People no longer are just able to blog, but blogging is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate medium of information; albeit quite different to others. At the cost of the credibility associated with major news services and other more traditional ways of getting our information, a whole new world is opened up- of personal opinion, a perspective into the lives and experiences of others and original creativity. When subjective experience and opinion is sought over objective fact, blogging becomes a medium very difficult to beat.’ Blogging is passé? I suspect that many of the old-timers have become a bit tired and unimaginative-- it's just getting started. (Let's encourage young bloggers instead of greeting them with statements like "Blogging is dead")

Ike Really Tore Up Louisville You will find a collection of pictures I took after the storm here. Unfortunately, some streets still look like this a week later. Though we got electricity back about 12 hours after it went out, most houses and businesses around us are still dark. LG&E, our local utility, has been saying it may be another week before all power is restored.

Au revoir to cool hand Luc Besson Luc Besson is in denial. The 49-year-old French film potentate and master of pop cinema (see Nikita, Léon, The Big Blue) has made yet another peerless action classic in the Paris-set kidnap drama Taken. Written and produced by Besson, it stars Liam Neeson as a semi-retired CIA hatchet man who will stop at nothing to bring his missing daughter back home, and send her captors to hell. It is directed by Besson’s former Steadicam operator Pierre Morel, but with its luxurious mix of slick style, emotional melodrama and bone-crunching thrills, it’s got Besson’s fingerprints all over it.

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

TinEye is an image search engine. Search the web for images using an image. Finally! It's still getting its legs-- a lot of images are still not indexed and it's difficult to find an original source, but this is certainly a start. (via)

Kim Philby

Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security:

Kim Philby (right) shown here following the shelling of his vehicle during the Spanish Civil War, was a member of the Communist Party while at Cambridge University, where he recruited and led a ring of spies for the Soviet Union.

This is one of the most remarkable photographs I've seen. The exchange between Philby and his interlocutor, the man looking at the camera, the mysterious blond man with his back turned... energy and character just pours off of it. It leaves me begging to know more.

Kim Philby

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Tinker, tailor, soldier, defector — John le Carré: I nearly left the West John le Carré, the espionage writer, has revealed that he was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the cold war.... Le Carré’s remarks are particularly intriguing because his own career as a secret agent was in effect destroyed by the treachery of Kim Philby, the double agent.

Briton was safe-cracker for Osama Bin Laden and Idi Amin He described the Al-Q'aeda head as "friendly" and the Ugandan dictator as "fun". I heard a rumor that when Osama was training with the CIA in the U.S. during the Russia-Afghanistan War that he was known as Tim Osmond. When the first "Wanted" photos were released in the late 1990s, some CIA officers were reported to have said, "Hey, that's Tim!"

Stephen Hawking to unveil strange new way to tell the time Prof Stephen Hawking is to unveil a remarkable £1 million clock with no hands that pays tribute to the world's greatest clockmaker.

Hurricane Ike's Sprawl a Meteorological Mystery Considering the vastly different dangers posed by these storms, it's natural to wonder just why some storms get so big while others stay small, despite having the same hurricane-force winds. Why, in other words, is Ike such a titan? also: History's Worst Storm Surges

also:
Vladmaster - Handmade viewmaster reels (via)
How to Draw Anything in One Step
How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week (via)

viddy:
The Peanut Vendor - Len Lye 1933 (via)
Kunstbar (careful what you drink at the Artbar)
Richie Hawtin 2008 DJ Setup
Bebe Barron on Anaïs Nin
The Natural History of the Chicken part 1/6 (via)

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Ripper 'claimed earlier victims' Jack the Ripper may have killed his first victim 25 years earlier than previously thought, a retired murder detective has claimed in a new book. Also interesting: Traditionally, the serial killer is alleged to have removed organs from the bodies of his victims, including his second "official" victim Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes, his fourth, with a degree of medical precision. But Mr Marriott said: "The organs were not removed by the killer at the crime scenes but by person or persons unknown for medical research at some point between the bodies being removed from the crime scenes and the post mortems taking place some 12 hours later. Marriott also maintains that there were similar murders committed in Germany, Nicaragua and the eastern United States. If so, this might lend some credence to the local legends of the Savannah Ripper, blamed for upward of seventeen murders from 1889 to 1930, although I suspect that a number of these, especially the later ones, are unrelated to the case. Some have speculated that Jack the Ripper and the Savannah Ripper were one and the same.

British spy in longbow plot to kill Heinrich Himmler A British spy who was a cross between James Bond and Robin Hood plotted to use a longbow to assassinate one of the most notorious Nazis, according to a new book...“He was a real-life 007, getting through a tremendous number of women and doing all kinds of spectacular stunts to evade the Nazis,”

Rare Artifact Found In Maryland Surf A large section of what is likely a fairly ancient wooden vessel was discovered in the surf at 43rd Street this week and now awaits its fate in a town-owned storage facility in West Ocean City as state historians and maritime archaeologists attempt to date it and perhaps discover from whence it came. The roughly 25-foot long, L-shaped artifact was first discovered in the surf by swimmers in the 43rd Street area on Monday. Ocean City Beach Patrol staffers tried to remove the unknown object from the water, but quickly realized it was something much larger than they were capable of moving. The town’s Public Works department was called in and was eventually able to haul the giant piece of history from a bygone era from the water using a front-end loader and other equipment. (via)

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Has anyone noticed that oil has dropped below $106 a barrel? Crude oil and gold led a decline in commodities in London as Hurricane Gustav spared the U.S. Gulf states the destruction caused by Katrina and Rita in 2005.

How books changed Mafia man's life For the first time in his life he started reading books, looking deeper into himself and searching for some answers. He set himself the challenge to read the entire prison library. "Prison was the greatest thing that happened to me, because it gave me time to look inside myself, the solitude that I needed to take a closer look at everything around me; to analyse myself."

Danish artists create life-size walking house With oil prices rocketing and mortgages plummeting, visionary Danish artist collective N55 has solved the joint problems of transport and housing by building a home that can walk. A new twist on the mobile home, although I have a feeling it wouldn't fly in this country unless it could do around 75mph. (via)

Dennis Hopper's life: a hell of a ride Hopper’s description sums up his career. He’s part of Hollywood history as the man who in 1969 made independent movie-making a serious business by directing and starring in Easy Rider alongside Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda. The result was a winning hand that’s kept him in the game ever since, even though he’s run low on chips. But somehow he’s never quite managed to establish himself as a big winner. For a good chunk of his 50-year acting career he has been sidelined by film studios, nervous about his reputation for drink, drugs and wild behaviour and for speaking his mind. I think he's done just fine, all in all.

Seven Eight Things To Do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing 8. Write.

also:
Six Ways to Fix the CIA
People Who Lose Jobs Become Hermits
US army has laser guns in its sights
20 Things You Didn't Know About... Telescopes
Art games and not-games (really good ones, too)
EnglishScholar.com - A compendium of electronic resources

viddy:
Welcome to My Study 4 (prev)
The Prisoner: Video Exclusive - Building The Village
The World of Anathem (via)
The 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube
Kurt Vonnegut documentary
UbuWeb - Christian Marclay

Roald Dahl with Ernest Hemingway, London, 1944

from Newsweek: A Spy We Loved, The glamorous wartime British sleuths knew how to work a party.

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Strapped for cash, some in New Orleans stay and hope Several New Orleans residents say they can't afford to leave-- for various reasons.

Serial killer on the loose in California, police say Los Angeles, California, police detectives are looking for a serial killer who they believe killed at least 11 people, many of them prostitutes, over a 23-year period. Just one? I always thought that it was policy not to talk about serial killers with the press. There must be some specific reason why their breaking protocol in this case.

Roald Dahl's seductive work as a British spy Old Roald seems to be getting around quite a bit these days... just like he did when he was alive, it seems.

also:
The son of John le Carré on ninjas, mimes and his first novel
Extreme Macro Photography on a budget (via)
Photo Tampering Throughout History (via)
iPosture Just over one inch in diameter, the iPosture automatically senses when the body slouches, and it alerts the user with brief vibrations to correct it. They also have the 'extreme tase' setting for hardcore slouchers. (via)

viddy:
The first few minutes of The Conversation (via)
The Moog Foundation YouTube page (via)

stray bullets

Mexico's Cocaine Capital The bullet holes in the safe-house door tell you who's winning Mexico's drug war. The armor-piercing ammunition, fired from the inside by drug traffickers, shredded the 20-gauge steel like small cannonballs; the rounds fired from the outside, by federal police, merely punctured the metal like so much bird shot. After that midnight firefight on May 27--the result of a botched police raid in the desert city of Culiacán in northwestern Mexico--seven cops lay dead. Only one narco gunman died; the rest, at least half a dozen, escaped. For neighbors, the carnage carried an unambiguous message. "I realized," says Victor Rodríguez, a fishmonger and family man, "that the power of the narcos has surpassed the power of my government."

Cyber War and Cyber Terrorism in India India is also suffering from the menaces of cyber war and cyber terrorism. Nobody cares about any these threats in India. Far more citizens were concerned of the Amarnath issue than by potential risks of nuclear conflict, or near-breakdowns in Net and mobile security. China's intensified cyber warfare against India is becoming a serious threat to national security. (via)

India's 'fragrant' rubbish dumps Authorities in the western Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) have been dousing rubbish dumps with perfume to lessen the putrid stench. Loved this: "Segregation of garbage is the solution to reducing stench," he said. (via)

also:
He dreamt up Bond, but did Fleming also create the CIA? (maybe helped) (via)
13 things that do not make sense (via)
A Conversation with Malcolm McDowell (audio)

viddy:
Buzz Aldrin Interview
Jay J. Ames, private investigator with hands of steel
Gordon Bradt's Six Man Clock Kinetic Sculpture
Interview with Douglas Hofstadter (en français)

stray bullets

Slow news day today, but we have a few items to mull.

More Miss Marple than 007: the true face of British espionage Like 007, they were licensed to kill, but they would never have dreamt of carrying a gun. “Obviously if your back was to the wall you would have done what was necessary,” Lady Ramsay says. “But we weren't like Rosa Klebb, we didn't have special shoes with poisoned daggers.” Her own firearms training was not a success. “The instructor told me, ‘You're not supposed to close your eyes every time you pull the trigger'.” Lady Park kept her gun in the safe. “In the Congo, I frightened an unwanted visitor away by pretending I was a witch. I shouted out of the window, ‘If you do not go away, your feet will fall off'. That was far more effective than a gun.” Much cooler than the mythology.

also:
Mark Twain's travels in India (via)
New Milky Way Map Reveals A Complicated Outer Galaxy
Canada seeks historic shipwrecks
The Fauxmaxion Map an interactive interpretation of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion World Map. (read more) (via)
How To Hot Wire Your Car

viddy:
Phillip Glass composition for Sesame Street
Sesame Street - How Crayons Are Made
The Daredevils Who Chase One of the Sky's Greatest Mysteries
Romanian Gypsies (photomontage)

Bill Evans was born on this day in 1929. Bela Lugosi died on this day in 1956.